I have a freshman at Poolesville smacs program AMA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, was your kid in a magnet middle school program? Interested in how the workload compares. (Mine is and does not have a demanding workload at all, and breezes through magnet classes, so wondering if he’s just organized or if he’s in for a rude awakening if he gets in to SMCS).

OP here. Yes, my child was at the magnet program at rcms. My child had a very easy time at rcms, maybe 1-2 hours of hw a night, if that. Did very well in middle school, yes this was very rude awakening for us.

Hm, mine is at TPMS and I doubt he has 1-2 hours a week! Mostly he gets his homework done in between classes at school and rarely has much to do at home unless he’s really into a computer science project.

Same here and wonder if it is always like that in TPMS or it has been watered these days.

I have a lottery kid at TPMS and their older sibling who went through it a few years earlier under the old system. It's exactly the same. The truth is more kids can do this than there are spaces and there was no need to water anything down.

[Anonymous]

I heard many teacher doesn’t like to travel to poolesville so some classes are taught by inconsistent substitutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard many teacher doesn’t like to travel to poolesville so some classes are taught by inconsistent substitutes.

Teachers don’t like the commute, so they just don’t show up?

This makes no sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard many teacher doesn’t like to travel to poolesville so some classes are taught by inconsistent substitutes.

Teachers don’t like the commute, so they just don’t show up?

This makes no sense.

Yup, at least two of my child’s classes have a substitute multiple times a week. Subs don’t like to travel out there either, so sometimes the kids just teach themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard many teacher doesn’t like to travel to poolesville so some classes are taught by inconsistent substitutes.

Teachers don’t like the commute, so they just don’t show up?

This makes no sense.

Yup, at least two of my child’s classes have a substitute multiple times a week. Subs don’t like to travel out there either, so sometimes the kids just teach themselves.

Most of my kids teachers are out 1-2 times a month but we're not anywhere near Poolesville. I think it's just normal teacher burnout.

[Anonymous]

What is "whole school magnet?" All students are tested in? Where do the local kids go then?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is "whole school magnet?" All students are tested in? Where do the local kids go then?

Local kids can test into the magnet programs or attend in the ISP House. Details are on the website.

[Anonymous]

Could you share about how much time they need to spend on homework during an average week? After watching the presentation last night, I'm trying to figure out how their schedule would impact our family. Extended day until 3:25, then an hour before the bus will arrive to take them on a 1- 1.5 hour ride home (it appears for our neighborhood). If they don't get home until close to 6, I'm concerned about time to complete the work and still do other activities they are involved in right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s the MAP score of your kids last year? Thanks

290

Do they check grades for all the subjects or just Math, computers, science.
Also MAP R?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Could you share about how much time they need to spend on homework during an average week? After watching the presentation last night, I'm trying to figure out how their schedule would impact our family. Extended day until 3:25, then an hour before the bus will arrive to take them on a 1- 1.5 hour ride home (it appears for our neighborhood). If they don't get home until close to 6, I'm concerned about time to complete the work and still do other activities they are involved in right now.

OP here, yes my child gets home around 5:30. My child does hw/studies for test until almost every night 12-1 am. And then wakes up again at 6 am. It’s tiring and grueling and the culture there is all the students are obsessed with grades and scoring high(good majority of them brag about their scores and makes those who do poorly feel bad, ) not about the actual learning process. The higher scoring kids would say I did so bad…..then reveal they really they got like a 48/50, and make those who scored lower feel bad about their score, It was a shock to my child (the workload and the bragging students) she came from the magnet middle school and saw none of that there.
No one told us last year how much work these kids actually have to do, it’s crazy that a 14/15 yr old is expected to do this much work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could you share about how much time they need to spend on homework during an average week? After watching the presentation last night, I'm trying to figure out how their schedule would impact our family. Extended day until 3:25, then an hour before the bus will arrive to take them on a 1- 1.5 hour ride home (it appears for our neighborhood). If they don't get home until close to 6, I'm concerned about time to complete the work and still do other activities they are involved in right now.

OP here, yes my child gets home around 5:30. My child does hw/studies for test until almost every night 12-1 am. And then wakes up again at 6 am. It’s tiring and grueling and the culture there is all the students are obsessed with grades and scoring high(good majority of them brag about their scores and makes those who do poorly feel bad, ) not about the actual learning process. The higher scoring kids would say I did so bad…..then reveal they really they got like a 48/50, and make those who scored lower feel bad about their score, It was a shock to my child (the workload and the bragging students) she came from the magnet middle school and saw none of that there.
No one told us last year how much work these kids actually have to do, it’s crazy that a 14/15 yr old is expected to do this much work.

Op here again. After I wrote the above post, I felt maybe I sounded too discouraging. I just wanted to be truthful bc nobody really told us how many hours kids would be studying to get good grades last year. Everyone said there would be plenty of time to do sports and other extracurriculars. So in an attempt to be truthful and transparent I might have sounded discouraging. I apologize for that, it is a lot of work. The Workload is significantly more in smacs than the other two magnet programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s the MAP score of your kids last year? Thanks

290

Do they check grades for all the subjects or just Math, computers, science.
Also MAP R?

Only math and science. Not map-r

[Anonymous]

I wonder how much weight is on the essay. 250 words serve for all programs that the student apply. what are valued here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s the MAP score of your kids last year? Thanks

290

Do they check grades for all the subjects or just Math, computers, science.
Also MAP R?

Only math and science. Not map-r

No map-R even for humanity program?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How much does a kid have to love math to tolerate having a longer school day than everyone else?

The Long day is brutal, you have to REALLY love math. Kids wake up at 5:30-6 am to take a 6:45 bus and many don’t get home until 5-5:30 pm. It’s ridiculous that the hardest program at Poolesville is the one with the longest day. Many kids don’t go to bed until like 1 a.m. almost everyday, not just several times a quarter before a big test/project. It’s almost everyday on very little sleep.

Yes, chronic lack of sleep can be a thing for some kids. Thankfully, for both my SMCS alum kids, DH and I juggled work so that they did not have to take the bus. We dropped and picked them up by car. We shaved at least 1.5 hours from commuting for them. It made a big difference. Another thing was that my kids usually had 2-3 hours of homework each night, but they were in bed by 9pm most days. My DS played video games with his friends so he slept a little later, after I yelled at him. But he was in bed by 10 pm. Up by 6:40 am. Napping on the way to school. Napping on the way back home. Napping for an hour after coming back from school etc.

Also, my kids basically were just studying, doing ECs, self-care and sleeping. They did not do any chores at home. We were pretty much doing everything for them to make things easy. Their time became very precious and we really had to always keep that in mind. No smoking, no vaping, no partying and no dating. Once they were accepted in college in Senior year - suddenly everything eased up.